Question: Could you give us a brief description of your inner healing ministry?
Answer: In my second book I give twelve different angles of how you can experience inner healing. It’s not some bizarre new experience, but it’s a part of the natural walk in life. Inner healing is synonymous with spiritual growth and each personl who begins to practice the teachings of Jesus begins to move into inner healing. I use the Scripture that God knew us before we were conceived. Therefore, he knew us also when we were conceived. I’ve found that the time from conception to birth can be as significant as the period from birth to five years old. I have seen this from experience. I ask people to imagine their conceptions and to see Jesus in that picture. And so a person’s conception is holy and ordained by God. What happens in an audience is that every illegitimate person breaks. There is no way that a person who knows that he is illegitimate can ever deal with it in a rational, logical way. Psychiatrists and psychologists have for years held the theory that an unborn child can pick up negative emotions from his environment. These remain on the unconscious level at birth, and so there is no other way to reach them except through the grace of Jesus. You can spend years in psychoanalysis, but there’s no way to be healed except by divine grace. This is the most universal thing about my ministry.
There are two things that I feel are of the utmost importance. The first thing a person must do is get to the place where he will say, “I will to be born.” So many people who have become failures in life are people who live passive lives. They often have an unconscious will to die. The hardest thing I have to do is to get an audience to imagine Jesus at the time of birth saying, “You don’t have to be born unless you really want to. This is going to be your chance. You’ve got to make the decision. Do you will to be born? You’re going to be in my love and my care. I’ll never leave you and I’ll never forsake you. Do you want life?” I try to give people confidence in Jesus’ words. And then I tell the audience that this may be the most important decision you ever made. That way they take the responsibility for their lives instead of blaming parents or God. Sometimes I spend more time on this than anything else. This kind of technique uses the imagination. You can use it in praying for others or in trying to free yourself from debilitating attitudes. I’ve had many changes in my life. I’m not always sure what caused me to respond differently to situations. I’ve had many problems. Rejection was a basic one with me. Some people struggle with an inferiority complex. Siblings close in age often experience this. One of them acts like a sweet little angel while the other is a perfect little devil. The child who is openly honest usually gets blamed for everything, and therefore he suffers. And then, many people are frustrated, which is caused from being threatened as children: I’m going to punish you if you don’t make better grades. I try to deal with the root causes of these problems. A lot of times people tell me the symptoms, such as, I’m a drug addict or I can’t get along with my wife. But I don’t ever worry about that. I go from what I know to trying to pinpoint the root cause. I have certain meditations that I use depending on what the root problem is—frustration, guilt, fear.
Q: What do you believe is the church’s role in healing?
A: Well, if we take the Scripture in its entirety we can’t deny the value of Jesus’ healing ministry. The church must incorporate the healing ministry as a part of its total program—the anointing with oil and the laying on of hands. Episcopalians have done this, perhaps because the order of Saint Luke has perpetuated this movement of healing. And Catholics have incorporated healing as a part of their ministry. Some other denominations haven’t.
Q: What about Pentecostals?
A: Yes, they have. And in the last ten years Methodists have really opened up with the healing ministry. I think that probably the Baptists of the major denominations ignore it.
Q: Should healing ministries be under the government and the discipline of the local churches or denominations?
A: Yes, I think that that would be the proper chain of order. It would have more impact.
Q: Does your local church support or hinder your ministry?
A: My local church supports it. My minister had a very hard time at first with the whole ministry of inner healing. He could accept the physical and spiritual healing, but he had a lot of trouble with emotional healing. We talked several times after he read my first book. He had a lot of questions about it. But six months later he came and said, “I’ve found a scriptural basis for your views.” That was heartwarming to me. We’re very close.
Q: Would you say that there are people who are spiritually sick rather than physically sick and who need some kind of spiritual healing?
A: Yes. I think that any time a person disobeys God he separates himself from God. I think that the person then would have a spiritual sickness. In order to be healed he must repent and receive absolution for his disobedience. And this is spiritual healing to me. It’s different from a physical healing, which is organic, or from an emotional healing. Emotional illnesses and spiritual illnesses are similar because they both stem from disobedience or unforgiveness or lack of love.
Q: There may be people then who are emotionally and not spiritually sick?
A: Yes. Spiritual bondage comes from something the person actually did—a sin he committed, a disobedience to God, an overt act. Emotional illness comes from things having been done to you that you reacted to or responded to in a negative way, such as being hurt by another person or being rejected or blamed unjustly or threatened or put down consistently. All that results in a poor self-image. I’m afraid some of our theology may compound this. You know, man is evil, man is no good—all those Bible passages about the nature of man. When I deal with problems like drug addiction or homosexuality I try to get to the root causes—usually one of those things I just mentioned. I don’t treat the symptoms.
Q: Do you think churches are doing enough to help people find healing?
A: Churches put more emphasis on the spiritual, rather than the physical and emotional side of healing. If we’re going to heal the whole person we need to deal with all three. Jesus reached out to the whole person. I don’t believe you can separate them into simplistic categories, because they’re so interrelated.
Q: How would you relate regeneration, or the new birth, to this?
A: Each of us is born into a state of Adam-sin. Man is only aware of the physical and the intellectual parts of his personality. I think that the rebirth experience is when a person becomes aware of the part of him that is eternal. When Christ’s spirit enters a person, the dormant spiritual part of him is regenerated, revived, brought to life. This is the rebirth experience to me. I think it can happen in two ways. It can happen through a personal experience with Jesus, which will have emotion and feeling, though that’s not necessary. I think that it can happen through the will and faith.
Q: But always connected with faith in Jesus?
A: Well, it would have to be from Jesus. There’s no way to the Father except through Jesus.
Q: In other words you accept the traditional notion of personal sin being justified by faith in Christ?
A: Yes, by faith.
Q: What is the scriptural basis for inner healing?
A: Well you know, really there are more passages in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. To me, the word heart in the Bible means the subconscious. I went through the Scriptures from the beginning to the end, studying every passage on the heart—and let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable or I will take a heart of stone and I will make this heart of stone into a heart of flesh. That means that through Christ the coldness, bitterness, resentment, and hostility of a person can be transformed into a healed heart of flesh—warm, loving, alive.
Q: What strengths and weaknesses do you see in the small group movement?
A: Well, I think that the small group experience is important for the growth of the Christian. So many times Christians are reluctant to talk about their spiritual, emotional, or personal lives. A small group makes it easier to open up. For example, in my church we have Wednesday night prayer meeting. We used to have between two and three hundred people there. When the time came for prayer requests, no one ever opened up and said, “I have a need.” It was just, “Pray for so and so who is sick.” A large group can be intimidating. In the past few years our church has broken up into small groups, and it’s very obvious that people feel much freer to share in them. I’m sure that this would be true of most churches.
Q: In other words, you take seriously the New Testament command to share each other’s burdens?
A: I believe that’s the thing we’ve really missed in Christian fellowship. We didn’t have the opportunity. People are willing to share burdens and help others, but that’s only possible in a close communion.
Q: Do you think that you can heal people emotionally or physically without first bringing them face to face with Christ?
A: Yes. This upsets a lot of Christians. People have often said to me that no matter how they’ve tried they couldn’t believe in God or Jesus, that they felt blocked. I have found that this goes back to childhood. Perhaps the person has had an unfortunate, traumatic childhood with his father. Subconsciously, when they try to relate to a heavenly father, they react the way they do to their earthly fathers. When I sense that this is a person’s problem I work to bring him into a relationship through imagination where he can forgive his father. Often a person will move right into an experience of God and his love through Jesus.
Q: At a National Town Meeting recently you said that some of the non-Christians with whom you work could not identify with the spiritual Jesus but that it was important for them to identify with the physical Jesus. What did you mean by that?
A: I didn’t say anything like that. That’s a distortion. It’s not totally incorrect, but it’s just distorted. I said that it’s very important for a person to identify with Christ the Son of God and Jesus the Man—to know him in his spirituality and also know his humanity in order to have the deepest, most complete appreciation of who he was.
Q: You would say, then, that he is the God-Man?
A: That’s right. I feel that so many Christians deny the humanity of Jesus. They only identify with him in church and not with the everyday life of a man who walked the earth.
Q: About a year ago on television you made a commentary about hell. Did you say that there is no such place as hell where the unsaved are eternally punished?
A: Another woman on the program was painting a warped view of Jesus. She said that since she accepted Jesus she prays every time she gets on a plane that Jesus will take every martini and turn it into water. And that she gave up movies when Jesus came into her life, and that she gave up this and gave up that. When the moderator asked what she had to look forward to she said, “eternal life”. Then he asked me if I thought that people who danced, for example, will bum in hell. I said that we do not experience hell after we die, we experience it before we die. Until a person comes into union with Jesus Christ he is in hell. And if he lives out his life and dies without that he remains in hell. If a person comes into union with Jesus on this earth he doesn’t have to wait until death to enter heaven; his judgment is from the moment he comes into union with Jesus, and, therefore, heaven will continue right on after life. Now this is what I said, and it was twisted so that I denied the existence of hell.
Q: Do you believe in Satan? That he’s alive, well, and active in the world?
A: Listen, I try my best to concentrate on love, on good, and on Scripture. There is no evil in anything except as you make it. For example, I wash my hair with beer, and I make homemade bread with beer. But when people see me buying beer, they assume I’m doing something evil. I believe that there is a force of evil. I would hate to call it a person. The Prince of Power is a biblical name for it. I have seen demons possess people. Not as many as I believe are exorcised in some faiths. But, I’ve seen a good number of rituals that involve voodoo and witchcraft. So I cannot deny that there is a real force of evil. As far as putting any shape, size, personality, person, or name to it, I don’t. I believe that perfect love will cancel out every other power, even satanic power. I try to get a person to think of love and Christ.
Q: Are you denying a personal devil?
A: I don’t know what you mean by a personal devil. When you say that all I can think about is that man on a can of lye.
Q: Let’s put it this way. In the book of Revelation it says that the beast and the false prophet and the devil are cast into the lake of fire. What would you understand that to mean?
A: Now, you want me to answer if I believe that they had a fight and that the angel Lucifer fell down to earth. I studied all of that—everything the Scripture says about it. But I believe that there is the power of Christ that overcomes any force of evil, whatever it is, whatever shape or form it takes. I know people like to discuss Satan. They like to discuss the devil. They want to talk about demons. I concentrate on Christ.
Q: It is popular today. But what about the Scripture that says resist the devil and he will flee you?
A: I resist the devil by putting on the whole armor of God. When I go to a meeting and I know that I’m going to face hostility and anger, all satanic forces, I try to feed on Jesus and pour over the Scriptures. This is the way to make the devil flee—to be fortified with Jesus’ teaching and filled with his love. With the kind of ministry I have I’m constantly moving into antagonistic groups. You do realize that my ministry is one of reconciliation—broken churches, broken people, broken groups, broken everything. I don’t ever go into a smooth, easy, nice little church.
Q: What is the role of speaking in tongues in the Christian life?
A: I’m a very shy person by nature. I have never spoken in tongues in a large group. I’m not offended when someone does and there’s an interpretation. But the only place for it in my life is in privacy—in my own meditations and in my own devotions. I have found that it’s a beneficial tool when I’m traveling away from home. Sometimes I get homesick and lonely. I start wondering why God made me do this. Then I don’t want to pray because I blame God that I’m not home with my family. That’s when I feel no love for God and I can pray unemotionally in tongues. It helps me rekindle my love for God. So tongues-speaking is valid in my life.
Q: Now, in your inner healing ministry, what is the role of the Holy Spirit? What would you regard as being filled with the Spirit constituted?
A: If a person makes a total commitment to Christ, which is different from being united with him by faith and having eternal life, then, I think, they have the power of the Holy Spirit. When that commitment comes you’re letting down all of your guards. If a person has resisted very strongly—my husband is a perfect example—and when they finally let go it will be a very traumatic, emotional experience. I kind of eased into total commitment, so there was nothing dramatic or traumatic about it. It was just that I finally said I commit all that I am.
Q: Are there any outward signs that would indicate when a person is filled with the Spirit?
A: Sometimes there are outward signs and sometimes there are no outward signs. I think it depends on the individual person.
Q: Are you saying that there are two baptisms?
A: When a person accepts Jesus, and the Holy Spirit comes within, then they should have the filling of the Spirit. That part of it should come right away. Receiving Christ’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, and giving yourself to him, are two different things, but they should be done at the same time.
Q: You mean they can be done at the same time. But it doesn’t always happen that way.
A: When people understand it, it does. In my meetings in foreign countries where people had no prior teaching about the baptism of the Spirit, they experience the love of God, they accept Jesus and his death on the cross. They’re set free. Then I lead them right into yielding to him and they begin speaking in tongues.
Q: Do you think that speaking in tongues is the sign of the baptism?
A: I have seen hundreds and thousands of people who have made that commitment but they’ve been told that they haven’t received the baptism because they don’t speak in tongues.
Q: But they have, even though they haven’t spoken in tongues?
A: Yes. But the only reason they haven’t spoken in tongues is because there is probably something in their conditioning that would prevent it. The teachings I had from my Baptist church prevented me from it. I didn’t speak in tongues for a year and a half after I received the baptism. I refused to. But once the barrier was broken, it didn’t matter if I was rejected by my church.
Q: At that same town meeting you said that people whose religion is not based on Jesus can apply your techniques.
A: Now you’ll have to keep in mind that the general public was invited to this meeting. Bishop Sheen was supposed to be there, but at the last minute he couldn’t come. No questions were screened and it was difficult to hear. But I think that this should be made clear because it upsets a lot of people. People ask if you can be healed if you don’t believe in Jesus. I don’t see that that blocks it at all. A person comes to me for help. My stand is the same, every bit of my healing prayer is based on the word of Jesus and his power, and I’m the one praying. They’ve come because they have faith in me. In the Bible Jesus says to the man who was let down from the roof that his friend’s faith made him well. He didn’t say that the man had any faith. So when people come to me, whatever their beliefs, I make my stand. So no one has ever been to me and didn’t know I was a Christian.
Q: In other words you would at the same time make known to them your faith in Jesus.
A: No one’s ever in the dark about it. I ask the person, “Are you a believer?” If the answer is no I ask if he believes that through my faith he can be healed. Sometimes I’m told that a person came because a friend recommended me. I’m the one who will be the instrument of Jesus. Jesus is the only one who can walk back into the past. He’s the only one who can touch every moment you’ve ever lived. That’s what I tell people. They would like me to use someone else other than Jesus. But that’s not possible. Then I ask the person to identify with Jesus as the perfect man of love. Usually someone can do that. Then through imagination I ask the person to think of Jesus as that expression of love. That opens up the way for him to feel what I’m saying. Suddenly the person accepts him and they don’t understand how it happened. “How could that have happened to me? How could I have been changed so?” people ask. If I go into a group that is Moslem or Communist and say that to be healed you must believe in Jesus Christ, most of them would shut me out. I have to begin in a way that will get them communicating with me or relating to me emotionally.
Q: When did you speak to a Communist group?
A: The University of Bogota is totally Communist. I had sixty students from the school at a meeting. Two of them were Christians. The rest took their lunch hour to come listen to an American.
Q: How has your brother’s election affected your own ministry?
A: The only difference I have been able to see is the fact that the attendance has increased. I think a lot of people come because they want to meet Jimmy’s sister. Some people come because they’ve read about me in the press. Other people come because they hadn’t heard of inner healing until Jimmy’s election and they really need help. At first I liked it better when people came because they wanted help. Then I began to realize that it really doesn’t matter what their motives are as long as my message is the same. I’ve seen tremendous results with people who would never go to church for any reasons. Journalists come only to get a story, but I’ve been able to follow up and they’ve really become interested, so I’ve had some beautiful experiences. I consider Jimmy’s election an asset rather than a liability.
Q: What is your attitude toward abortion?
A: Although I’m not sure that there is consciousness the moment an egg is impregnated, I do think the fetus is a human being. I’m against abortion.
Q: I understand you are going to do a book about your brother Billy. Is that right?
A: Yes. I asked him if I could write his biography, and he said “okay.” I have the first draft finished. He says he’ll never read it because he doesn’t think there’s a woman capable of writing a book. I’ve really enjoyed it. I don’t see it as being far from my work, because it’s a psychological study of a person and how he relates to other people and other members of the family.
Q: When is it coming out?
A: The first complete draft will have to be reworked maybe twice more before publication.
Q: Is he going to clear it?
A: It’s already been cleared. His wife and daughter read the book. His wife never said a word—for about three and a half hours. And when she got to the end she said, “This is Billy.”
Q: Who is going to publish the book?
A: I haven’t gotten a publisher yet. I’ve got three or four who want it, but I haven’t committed myself yet. I want to get it completely finished and then get a publisher and a good editor. I do have an agent that’s going to work with me.
Q: Tell us something about your mother.
A: When my mother was a young girl she had a gold pin that she got for not missing a Sunday in church for something like fifteen years in a row. But from the time I was born until the time I was married I never knew my mother to go to church. When I was little she nursed seven days a week. She took the night shifts so she could work while we were asleep and be home in the daytime. On Sundays she wouldn’t go to church. Mother would go out to the chicken house and ring a chicken’s neck, pluck its feathers, clean and cook it. We would come home two hours later and find dinner ready. I thought my mother was a heathen. When I came into my experience of really knowing Jesus and who he is, I saw what a spiritual job my mother has done. She is a shower of mercy. My mother has always been for the underdog. It’s her nature. When she was in the Peace Corps in India she couldn’t eat because she saw so many people starving. Why should she have food when the people she was there to help didn’t? That was her attitude. She nearly died of starvation.
Q: What are some of the misunderstandings people have about your ministry?
A: I’ll just mention a couple of things. On a television show someone asked if I believed in reincarnation. I said I haven’t found any place in my theology and ministry to incorporate reincarnation. It was turned around in the press to say that I’m working on getting reincarnation into my ministry and theology.
Then there’s the one on praying to Mary. On a Phil Donahue show I said that I was trying to learn to break away from being the male dominant type of aggressive person. I thought that it would be good to concentrate on Mary and her femininity. I would get up in the morning and would ask myself how Mary would respond, what Mary would do, how Mary would go about the chores. I thought that it was an effective technique.
Q: How do you feel about the situation at the Plains Baptist Church?
A: It’s much worse than anybody knows. What they need in Plains now is a good inner healing service. But then, maybe what they really need is five fewer Carters in town.
D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.
